Death Rattle tb-8

by Terry C. Johnston

  Like a ram blindly leading his pack to the slaughter, Bent had returned to Taos for an unexpected visit.

  The breathless runner had carried that electrifying news from town early that afternoon. The Pueblo was instantly abuzz with preparations. Men came and went. Arms were gathered—such as they were—knives and pikes, axes and a few old fusils too. They would not need many firearms, Big Nigger realized. They had the strength of hundreds … while the Americans, while the foreigners, while all their wives and children polluted with the strangers’ blood, were pitifully few in number.

  The killing they had to do would not be conducted at the long-distance range of a rifle. Nor even the short distance of a belt pistol. No, this revolution Big Nigger would lead them on would be one of close-up, face-to-face killing. An occasion to see the fear in the white man’s eyes as his heart turned to water and he pissed all over himself knowing he was about to die like a cowardly pig. It was the finest sort of killing, this done face-to-face.

  To be able to cut a man to pieces, bit by bit by bit, a little at a time while your enemy was still alive.

  If Big Nigger had learned anything from his Delaware people back in the eastern woodlands, it was how to make exquisite torture of dispatching a captured enemy. Suspend a live victim upside down over a low fire and cook his brains until steam spurted from his ears. Or cut a small incision just below a victim’s navel, reach in with your fingers, and pull out a section of the man’s small intestine so you could nail it to a tree—then force your enemy to walk round and round that tree, slowly, agonizingly, dragging more and more gut from his belly with every tortured step until he died in his tracks.

  What would he do now to his enemy, this Governor Bent?

  A little while ago Big Nigger had watched how the Indians and Mexicans had hacked their first victim into pieces right in front of the American jailhouse. They let the sheriff escape—so the mob went looking for him. By the time they hunted down the American, Tomas’s mob had worked themselves into even more of a fury. But now the Indians appeared to take much enjoyment in seeing just how long they could keep the sheriff alive while they carved off a little more of the white bastard with every slice of their machetes.

  By the time they were finished with him in the alley, the mob had grown too big. Some splintered here, others there, different crowds streaming off behind one leader or another in search of an American’s shop to plunder, or an American’s house to raid, seeking to murder the inhabitants—men, women, and children too.

  But those who stayed behind with Big Nigger were the ones who knew the Delaware had big game in his sights. The biggest in the whole damned territory.

  He led them to the walls surrounding the Bent house. And they hoisted two men over the top of the adobe barrier, dropping to the ground inside the courtyard where they hurried over to drag the huge log from its hasps inside the gate. The pair had barely dragged the hewn timber through its iron sockets when Big Nigger threw his shoulder against one side of the double gate and flung his way into the darkened courtyard.

  Screaming, shrieking, crying for blood, more than thirty of the Indians clambered on top of the house with their planting tools and began to hack a hole in the roof. Big Nigger grinned wolfishly. This was just like digging into a burrow to yank a cowering prairie dog from its den.

  Using the large, squared cottonwood log from the gate, a dozen of them battered at the door to their enemy’s house. Finally a single wide panel shattered and they could peer inside. He saw shadows flickering at the mouth of a hallway. Voices, both angry and afraid too, echoing down that blackened hall.

  Some Mexicans stepped up beside him, elbowing close with their muskets. He inched backward, wary that they knew little of their firearms while the attackers shoved the gun barrels through the gaping splinters of the door and fired.

  “I hit him!” one of them cried.

  Furious, Big Nigger seized the Mexican by the neck and flung him backward like a rawhide doll. “No one kills the governor—no one but me!” He peered inside, spotted Bent leaning on the mantel, clutching a bloodied hand to his wounded face in the fire’s reflection. Suddenly at the Delaware’s shoulder stood a Pueblo warrior he knew by sight only—a skillful hunter.

  “I’ll wound him bad enough he can’t run away with his family,” the bowman vowed, bringing his short weapon up and pulling the string back to his cheek.

  While Big Nigger watched through the splintered door, the first arrow pierced Bent’s cheek. As the governor snapped it in two and ripped it from his face, another arrow struck him high in the chest. He staggered, his knees becoming watery.

  Now Big Nigger was furious.

  “Enough!” he screamed, propelling the bowman aside so roughly he took three others with him when he sailed backward against the mob. “Bring that ram up here! Knock this door down!”

  Stupid fool that he was, Bent was attempting to run away—staggering from the parlor as the remaining sections of the front door shattered into splinters and the mob streamed through the portal. The American was shuffling toward the hallway, raking at the arrow in his chest like a drunkard, mumbling incoherently.

  With his left hand Big Nigger snatched a torch from one of the Mexicans and stalked after the wounded man the way a hunter would follow the blood spilled by his wounded prey. Far down at the end of the hallway he heard frightened talk, muffled voices—then a shriek as Bent must have come into view of them. Sobbing women, several of them, Big Nigger thought as he penetrated the shadowy veil of that hallway.

  Now that his men had the back door blocked, he turned right into the blackened hall and saw them—the women and children. Strange thing was, one of the women was already half through the wall. She was reaching back into the hall, her arms held out for a child the others were passing to her. Big Nigger stood rooted to that spot a moment more when the women spotted him and screamed in terror, shoving the children through the hole they had made in the wall. A fireplace poker and a large pewter serving spoon lay at their feet on the floor. He admired their fortitude in digging through that wall by scraping out the mud seal around the adobe bricks with their simple tools and fingers too.

  “Charles!” one of them cried, the woman who was halfway through the hole.

  The rest started backing away as Big Nigger slowly advanced, his torch hissing in the darkened, narrow confines of that hall. There could be no escape. His enraged mob of Pueblos and Taosenos had the entire block surrounded. No one was escaping anywhere. Especially the wounded head of the beast.

  “Run, Rumalda! Oh, run!” another woman shouted to the one in the wall as she and another seized hold of the governor, dragging him toward the hole.

  As the two women attempted to push the man through, the one already in the hole used what little strength she possessed to pull the stocky American into the opening of their makeshift portal. Bent was trying to speak—nothing any of them could understand, every word of it garbled and nonsensical. Even for Big Nigger, who understood enough English to know that Bent was already out of his head and dying.

  But not, the Delaware vowed, before he could get his hands on the governor.

  With more than two dozen of the Indians pressing up behind their tall leader, Big Nigger watched Bent do something very strange. With his sticky, bloody fingers, the American fumbled in his vest pocket and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper. The governor held it up, his lips quivering, his hand trembling as he appeared to implore his enemy to take it.

  That made the Delaware hate him all the more. With the muzzle of his pistol, Big Nigger knocked the hand and that crumpled paper aside.

  It seemed that tiny act of violence on his part spurred three of the Indians to shove their way past Big Nigger and rush to the hole in the wall. They seized Bent from the arms of the woman and dragged the American back into the hallway. One of them held Bent up by his leather braces, then flung the governor against the wall, where he collapsed onto the clay floor.

  As that lone woman disappear
ed into the darkness on the far side of the wall, one of the Pueblos unstrung his bow and hurled the bow aside as he crouched over the American. Bent was groggy, mumbling nonsense as the Indian positioned the governor’s head just so—as only a warrior could do—then deftly used his narrow, twisted rawhide bowstring to slash the scalp from the white man’s head.

  Watching the horrid scene were those children hiding in the folds of the women’s dresses. One of them was shrieking, her whole body shaking as she collapsed to her knees. Arms held out, she was begging. That much was clear to Big Nigger. She was pleading for Bent’s life, for their lives.

  “You fools!” he thundered at the Indians suddenly.

  The three of them atop Bent immediately froze, gazing up at their leader in confusion and utter fear.

  “Don’t you see, you senseless fools?” he roared as he lunged over the scalper and slapped the man hard enough that he collided with the far wall when he flew off the American’s body.

  “What are you doing?” one of the trio demanded.

  Big Nigger swung his torch inches from the man’s nose, making the Indian shrink in terror, the sleeve on his greasy wool coat brushed with embers he frantically patted until they were smothered.

  “You’ve killed him now,” Big Nigger snarled. “We should have kept him alive.”

  “Alive?” one of the Mexicans demanded.

  Big Nigger recognized the man—a surly one. He was one of the head priest’s lieutenants. One of the handful of Mexican couriers who was often seen riding back and forth between the pueblo and Padre Martinez’s church in this last two weeks, carrying plans and instructions. Big Nigger shook his torch at the Mexican.

  The man leaped back a step, his face registering sudden fear.

  The Delaware shook the torch at the Mexican again, backing him farther still until the man was forced to stop against the crowd packed into the hallway.

  “Alive is what I said,” the Delaware repeated. “We’ll ’kill him when I say we kill him. We could have kept him as a valuable hostage until it was time for him to take his last breath.”

  Turning to look over his shoulder, Big Nigger saw that Bent’s chest moved only with shallow respirations. Good thing too. After all, the Delaware wanted to be the one to kill the governor himself.

  So now his gaze moved to the women and children cowering at the end of the hall.

  “Put them all in a room that has no wall to the outside,” he ordered.

  Some of his trusted comrades crowded past him in the narrow corridor and seized their captives, dragging them into one of the small bedchambers as the women wailed and the children screeched. The door was closed on them.

  “Two of you, stay right here,” Big Nigger ordered, glancing at the hole at the bottom of the wall. “See they don’t escape.”

  “Why let them live?” a voice asked.

  He stopped, standing right over the governor’s body, and told that mob packed in the hall, “We could have kept him from dying until I was ready to kill him. He would have been some use to us. Now we have to keep the others alive until we know if it is better for us that they live, or that they die.”

  He knelt by the governor, noticed how Bent’s hand twitched. The bastard somehow clung to life. These stupid Pueblos had ruined his plans, Big Nigger thought, when he had wanted to keep the head of the family alive. But now Bent was anything but head of his family—

  That was it!

  “Bring him and follow me!” Big Nigger roared at the swarms of men who stood sweating in bloodlust, packed elbow to elbow in that crowded hall. He shoved back through them to reach the front parlor.

  On his heels came the scalper. Once into that front room, the Indian found a small board and some brass tacks. As they waited for the governor’s body, Big Nigger watched the bowman stretch the American’s pliable, bloody scalp on that board, tacking it down in place as a battle trophy.

  Though it was a struggle, a pair of the Pueblos finally dragged the heavy American out of the crowded hall and over to their leader. The others inched back to give Big Nigger room as the pair dropped the wounded white man onto his face at the Delaware’s moccasins. Someone edged out of the crowd and grabbed Bent’s ear, yanking on it to expose the fleshy neck. Such a pretty, white neck.

  “We must cut the head off this American beast!” Big Nigger shouted at them in their Pueblo tongue. Some translated it into Spanish for the enraged Mexicans among them.

  “With the head cut from it—a body will wither and die!” the Delaware exhorted them. “You cut the head?” someone yelled.

  They had blood in their eye, and the taste of it already sweet on their tongues. Their knives were ready. He could see they would mutilate this American beyond recognition within a matter of heartbeats … just as soon as he gave them permission.

  “Yes! Cut it!” the crowd bellowed. “Cut the head from this beast!”

  Handing the torch to one of the Mexicans, Big Nigger took a huge knife from the man. Then knelt and seized a handful of what stark, white hair remained at the back of Bent’s neck. Pulling the head to the side, he gazed at the flabby white skin on the neck.

  Bent’s eyes fluttered. The lips moved slightly in the flickering torchlight.

  But not one sound of protest came from them as the Delaware began to slice, inch by inch, all the way through the neck until the body dropped away and he was left holding the head at the end of his arm.

  “Go! Find the others!” he shrieked at them, shaking the American’s head at them, splattering blood and gore on those closest to the scene.

  The first of the mob turned for the open doorway as he roared his commands one last time.

  “No man. No woman. And no child,” he growled like a beast with the scent of a kill strong in its nostrils. “Leave not one of them alive!”

  32

  There was no doubt in Scratch’s mind that his children weren’t suffering much at all as they crouched among the piñón and sage at the bottom of this narrow cleft in the valley floor several miles north of San Fernandez de Taos. But he did worry about Josiah’s offspring.

  While Magpie, Flea, and even Jackrabbit had grown up enduring weather far, far colder than this—and knew how to keep themselves warm out in the open—Titus wasn’t sure if Paddock’s town-raised young’uns could last out a subfreezing night. If it indeed took them all this night to creep and stop, creep and stop, until they reached Simeon Turley’s whiskey mill at Arroyo Hondo. Once they could reach the sanctuary of those stone buildings, Bass felt confident they could hold out until soldiers marched up from Santa Fe … or enough iron-forged mountain men came riding south from the Arkansas to drive back the brownskins who had let the wolf out to howl.

  But there was little chance in hell of either, he realized as the hours dragged past. Slim chance of someone sneaking out of Taos to gallop south to reach the dragoons in the territorial capital. Even less of a chance that a lone man might brave those hundreds of miles of frozen winter wilderness between this Taos valley and those faraway American settlements on the Arkansas. And if by some miraculous turn of fate some brave soul managed to do the unthinkable, just how many Americans could he round up for the ride back to Taos? Nowhere near enough to even up the odds when it came down to wading into those hundreds of Pueblos and pelados. But he didn’t breathe a whisper of his doubts. Looks Far Woman and her children were relying on Josiah. And once more Paddock was relying on Bass. Scratch wasn’t about to let any of them down by telling them the brutal truth. Part of protecting those he loved might well lie in protecting them from the truth.

  “We been in worse fixes, Josiah,” he whispered in the dark as they lay stretched out on their bellies, watching that long strip of horizon where the pale, icy-blue horizon met the black underbelly of the night sky.

  Paddock’s teeth chattered. They’d been moving and stopping for most of the night. Every time they heard a suspicious sound, or spotted something out of place, or even when some hunch Scratch felt made him wary—they
had gone into hiding while the two fathers lay flat on the high prairie and scanned the country in all directions for enemies.

  Earlier that afternoon, Titus had hurried Waits-by-the-Water back to the house, where they warned Looks Far and began making preparations to leave the village after dark. Young Joshua stayed behind at the store with his father to make everything appear as normal as they could. They planned to show up after the shop was closed at sunset. In the meantime, Looks Far kept her children busy by bringing in wood for the three fires and readying food they would need for the coming ordeal.

  Waits helped all the children prepare some extra clothing for their journey into the snowy countryside once night had fallen. About the time Stephen Lee’s wife, Maria, and their son, John, showed up, Scratch went out to see to the animals. Back in the small pasture behind the house, Scratch began to drive the Cheyenne horses toward the corral. Josiah’s mules and horses followed the obedient and steady Indian ponies into the pole corral. Titus quickly counted noses—and riders. There would be twelve of them needing a mount when they slipped out of Taos. Twelve horses, what with Flea riding with either his mother or father, and young John Lee riding double too. That meant that he needed to find the best three Paddock owned. No, four—three for riding, and a fourth for packing what they would need in the way of blankets, extra clothing, and food for what could be days in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristos at Turley’s Arroyo Hondo.

  It would be days, and long nights too, holing up at Turley’s mill before any force strong enough arrived to put down the rebellion and bring peace to this sleepy Mexican town. There he went again—thinking of Taos as a Mexican town. It was American now … and that heartless, cowardly mob out to kill American women and children were little more than outlaws deserving of nothing so good as a quick death.

  The sky still had a faint glow to it when Josiah brought his eldest home from the square. Everyone found a place in the parlor where the women served their supper of beans mixed with peppers, some boiled mutton, and large chunks of rich, black bread.